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Physical Review Letters

Honeycomb Pattern Formation by Laser-Beam Filamentation in Atomic Sodium Vapor

Ryan S. Bennink, Vincent Wong, Alberto M. Marino, David L. Aronstein, Robert W. Boyd, Carlos R. Stroud, Svetlana G. Lukishova, Daniel J. Gauthier

Published Feb 27, 2002• 56 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We have observed transverse pattern formation leading to highly regular structures in both the near and far fields when a near-resonant laser beam propagates without feedback through an atomic sodium vapor. One example is a regular far-field honeycomb pattern, which results from the transformation of the laser beam within the vapor into a stable three-lobed structure with a uniform phase distribution and highly correlated power fluctuations. The predictions of a theoretical model of the filamentation process are in good agreement with these observations.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.88.113901

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We have observed transverse pattern formation leading to highly regular structures in both the near and far fields when a near-resonant laser beam propagates without feedback through an atomic sodium vapor. One example is a regular far-field honeycomb pattern, which results from the transformation of the laser beam within the vapor into a stable three-lobed structure with a uniform phase distribution and highly correlated power fluctuations. The predictions of a theoretical model of the filamentation process are in good agreement with these observations.
This study presents examples of observed optical pattern formation in which a single laser beam propagating through atomic sodium vapor without feedback develops a stable, regular transverse structure. In particular, a three-filament near-field pattern leading to a honeycomb far-field pattern occurs at intensities near the saturation intensity and at powers larger than (but of the order of magnitude of) the critical power for self-focusing. The three-filament pattern has a uniform phase profile and strongly correlated power fluctuations, which suggest that it is perhaps a quantum image. These observations are also found to be in good agreement with numerical simulations of filamentation in a two-level atomic medium.
There are abundant nonlinear effects in atomic vapor. In this paper, the phenomenon of laser breaking up into filaments is studied in the near-resonant rubidium atomic vapor，which is induced by the strong nonlinear Kerr effect. When the continuous-wave laser beam with transverse Gaussian distribution passes through the atomic vapor, the pattern arising from the coherent superposition of the diffraction patterns of filaments is observed. We also investigated the influence on the mode pattern by input power of laser, the temperature of the vapor cell and the frequency detuning of pump light. Due to the hyperfine structure of rubidium atoms, the four-wave mixing effect exists in hot rubidium atomic vapor, which is related to the third-order nonlinear effect closely. The Raman gain of the Stokes and anti-Stokes photons is observed by scanning the frequency of the probe beam.
Circularly polarized laser beams propagating through sodium vapor and tuned to the buffer gas broadened atomic D1 transition can optically pump sodium atoms into a nonabsorbing groundstate. The corresponding groundstate populations depend on the intensity distribution, the polarization and the magnetic fields. They lead to refractive index gradients along as well as transverse to the laser beam propagation direction and therefore modify the light path giving rise to a number of nonlinear spatiotemporal intensity and polarization pattern creating processes.